An idea that sprang from a dinner party discussion among Tacoma civic leaders 14 months ago is beginning to take flight as a fledgling campaign that, if successful, could make Tacoma an international center for clean water technology.
The concept in its simplest form is to use Tacoma’s and Tacomans’ experience in dealing with clean-water issues, its Center for Urban Waters research center, its academic resources at the University of Washington Tacoma and the Washington State University Extension Center, the availability of waterfront sites for research labs, offices and light manufacturing to make the city a magnet for the clean-water business.
“In the vernacular of the economic development business, we’re leveraging the water-related assets we have to create a cluster of activity in a growing field,” said Bruce Kendall, co-chairman of the informally named Clean Water Tech Team. Kendall is chief executive of the Economic Development Board for Tacoma-Pierce County.
The idea has already attracted $50,000 in initial funding from the Port of Tacoma, the City of Tacoma, the State of Washington and the Economic Development Board to take the first steps in developing a major industrial recruitment campaign.
The effort so far has spawned a website, http://waterworkshere.com and has funded a strategic planning study.
Port of Tacoma Commission President Connie Bacon, who hosted the dinner party where the plan was hatched, said the campaign could provide the kind of new, clean industry that Tacoma needs to move its economy forward. The scientists, business people, academics and entrepreneurs attracted to Tacoma could help replace the highly paid workers the area economy lost by the Russell Investment Group’s recent move to Seattle and by the coming defection of biometric technology company MorphoTrak to Federal Way.
Bacon, co-chairwoman of the 25-member Clean Water Tech Team, said the role as a center for the emerging clean water technology business is a niche as yet unfilled by any other city.
The effort to recruit clean-water-related businesses to Tacoma relies in part on the Tacoma Tideflats’ unfortunate close acquaintance with a legacy of heavy industrial pollution. Cleaning up Tacoma’s industrial areas has been a 30-year learning experience that has given local officials a deep knowledge of water pollution issues.
Kendall said the team and its consultants are still exploring how to enhance the attractiveness of the Tacoma area to people in the clean-water business and how to market Tacoma not only as a site for their businesses but as a locale for international meetings about water technology. The Greater Tacoma Convention & Trade Center is part of the coalition of groups represented on the Clean Water Tech Team.
The consultant’s report, Kendall said, could reveal, for instance, that the best way to enhance the area’s attraction to clean-water scientists is to hire more nationally renowned researchers for the university or for the Center for Urban Waters.
The Port of Tacoma is offering for sale land it owns on the Wheeler Osgood Waterway as a potential site for a cluster of research labs, offices and light manufacturing businesses related to water.
The Wheeler Osgood site, 25 acres that the port bought in 2006, is near the site of what was once the world’s largest door plant. That plant, typical of the industries that made the Tideflats hum for generations, closed after World War II. The plant burned in a spectacular fire in the 1950s.
The Wheeler Osgood is an offshoot of the near-downtown Thea Foss Waterway. The Foss once was the site of heavy industries ranging from concrete and gas plants to plywood mills and waterfront warehouses. Now cleaned up by the city, the west shore of the waterway is the site of the Museum of Glass and several major condominium projects.
The port bought the Wheeler Osgood property in part to keep the east side of the Foss from developing into more residential use. The port didn’t want neighbors so close to its busy marine terminals who would be bothered by the noise and light from their activities.
Research and office facilities there would provide a kind of transitional buffer between the residential activity on the west side of the Foss and the container terminals farther east.
The city’s Center for Urban Waters building on the waterway’s east side occupies a site once destined for a major residential building. The center houses city engineers, UWT researchers and the Puget Sound Partnership, a state-funded agency tasked with restoring Puget Sound.
John Gillie: 253-597-8663
john.gillie@thenewstribune.com
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